


tili go

by all_these_ghosts



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/all_these_ghosts
Summary: She sings and Ashford joins her, and it is the only time they have ever been in harmony.





	tili go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plalligator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plalligator/gifts).



****She has been waiting for this. For her whole life, it feels like.

 _Captain Drummer_. Every time she hears it, a shiver runs through her. And if it isn't enough yet to make her feel like all her sacrifices were worth it, well — she expects to remain Captain Drummer for a good long time.

There is plenty of time.

* * *

The way some of them look at her, like they're just waiting for her to fail. She couldn't say why and she won't ask — if it's because she's a woman, or because she’s young, or if it's because they still see her as Fred Johnson's man, some jumped-up wellwala. Once in the corridors of the _Behemoth_ someone whispered that word at her, and she'd just held her head a little higher and kept walking, but sometimes she thinks she should've shot whoever said it.

* * *

Whatever title Dawes has handed him, Ashford is still a pirate and she doesn't trust him, not for a second.

But he follows her around like he's stuck to her, and she can't look up from her work without finding him hovering. His nose in everything. Never questioning — that she could handle; she's a good captain and she'll give honest questions honest answers, when she can — but just _suggesting_. _Insinuating_. Always when other crew are around to hear it, and start to _suggest_ and _insinuate_ too.

She idly considers pushing him out the airlock, but she doesn't think it would go over well.

He stands close — too close. It's not that she's gotten used to the Inners, who've never had to stand helmet-to-helmet to save each other's lives, but even for her own kind — _their_ own kind — he's too close. She knows it's deliberate.

“I’m only here to help you,” Ashford says, for what feels like the hundredth time. “You the captain.” But he says it with a sneer, and in the next breath he calls her by her first name: something she never offered, something he just _took_.

Naomi finds her in her quarters a few hours later.

“He’s just messing with you,” Naomi says, leaning against the doorframe. “Egging you on. You can’t let him.”

Drummer closes her eyes. Naomi knows. She gets called all the same names, and worse. It’s one thing to work for an Inner and a whole other thing to fuck one.

“I’m qualified for this post.”

“More than qualified,” Naomi agrees. Her voice low, reassuring. There is a steadiness to her now, lately, that Drummer envies.

Drummer’s fists clench and release, clench and release. There is no one to punch. Whenever she tries, Ashford stays her hand.

* * *

Naomi leaves.

She leaves to recover Holden, or to talk him down from whatever ledge he’s clambered onto this week. It’s hard to keep track. Either way what matters is she’s gone, and now it’s not just Drummer’s fists clenching.

It’s not jealousy, not exactly. Naomi isn’t hers, has never been hers. Drummer thinks Holden’s a fool and an attention whore, but Naomi will evidently follow him to the end of the solar system, and then some.

And no one is following Drummer anywhere.

She gets the sense that Ashford knows this — that she’s not jealous, no — but he’s smart enough not to say anything. Instead they make mouth noises about loyalty and prison ships, when Drummer just wants to snap _I didn’t want her to go either_.

So he pours her a drink and she knocks it back easy. Drummer's always been a good drinker. An old man like Ashford, she can drink him under the table. He'll be passed out cold on the floor before she breaks a sweat.

It occurs to her that she always does this: makes everything a competition. Maybe life would be easier if she didn't do that, but on the other hand everyone's always trying to take things that don't belong to them, and no one gives Belters credit for shit. She's fought tooth and nail for everything she has.

“Can’t buy me off with whiskey,” she says hoarsely after the fifth shot.

Ashford shakes his head. “Can’t I,” he says, with that little almost-chuckle she hates.

She can’t seem to say _stop fucking undermining me in front of my crew_ , she can’t seem to say _get your own fucking ship if you want one so badly_ , so instead she takes another shot, and another, until Ashford is red-faced and sputtering and she has to half-carry him back to his quarters and it’s so very petty, but it’s nice to feel like she won at _something_.

* * *

This is not how Drummer imagined she’d die: crushed between two hunks of metal in the bowels of a Mormon generation ship. No glory in battle, no shootout, no ship exploding into fireworks, become its own tiny supernova. Just bleeding out and trying to not to scream.

And listening to Ashford fucking _sing_ , which might be the worst part of all of this. Could have been she died right away, wouldn’t have had to listen to all this.

Drummer shuts him up and they trade war stories for a while, trying to keep each other awake. Funny how it matters to her now, that he doesn’t die. Battered old pirate. This might be a fitting end for him, but still she won’t start the engine. A few hours ago they were rivals; now they’re just Belters, and he’s her crew. You don’t let your crew die if you can help it.

Her own father used to sing that song. _Tili go, tili go_.

She doesn’t tell him that.

The pain in her leg is fading now, and she knows that’s a bad sign. Briefly she shuts her eyes to stop her head from spinning. Braces herself against the machine. Inhales, and her breath doesn’t catch even once.

She sings and he joins her and it is, she thinks, the only time they have ever been in harmony.

* * *

This fucking generation ship, the fucking Mormons. She is going to die in the dark.

* * *

She trusts Naomi, and Naomi trusts Holden. It’s the transitive property, and Drummer has always been good at math.

In that moment she realizes that she is going to end up on the wrong side of Ashford, again: that whatever peace or fragile allyship they’d cultivated down there in the machine elevator will be shattered, irreparable. 

Well. Everything else is breaking today.

 _He saved your life_ , some voice in her head reminds her, but she reminds it back, _I saved his first_.

* * *

When she first arrived back in the medbay the doctor took one look at her new legs and then stomped off without saying a word, but she’s trying not to think about that. She makes her way to Ashford’s cot. It’s off in a corner to give him the privacy he’s due, and she’s not sorry for that. Doctor’s not the only one who keeps staring at her legs.

She settles uneasily next to him, setting the bottle down. It’s a peace offering. A lot of that going around. He turns from her.

“Should na remove that restraint,” she says, because criticism has always been the way they communicate. “She got you good.” Same girl who’d spent years trying to kill Holden. Maybe they should leave her to it. She could knock out all the galaxy’s most powerful men, and then maybe everyone else could get some fucking work done.

Ashford still won’t turn to face her. “Why are you here?” he asks the wall.

Even though he can’t see it, she shrugs. “Think you’d have done the same for me.”

Silence. Neither of them point out that if he’d had his way, they’d all be dead. All of them, and everyone back in Sol, too. Fred Johnson. The girls she’d played golgo with, back on Tycho when she was off shift with energy to burn. All the bastards she’d stepped on to make her way here. Fucking Dawes.

“So we save the system," Drummer says, giving him more credit than he’s due, and pours herself a shot, drinks it down. The burn is good. “Was worth it, ke?” 

Whatever she’s expecting him to say, it’s not what comes next.

“One truly good thing,” Ashford says, then stops. His voice is lower than usual.

“What’s that?”

He turns to look at her then, finally, and he looks just as haunted as Holden had. She thinks that women hold their secrets better, deeper. The stillness on Naomi’s face, the set of her shoulders. The ice Drummer sees in her own features whenever she looks in the mirror.

“The girl tried to kill Holden,” he says. “What she told me. Asked me. If you do one truly good thing—“ 

“Does it make up for all the wrong,” Drummer finishes. “Yeah. We all think about it.”

“And what do you decide?” 

She shrugs. “What does it matter? You do it anyway." 

Ashford’s eyes meet hers, steady. Drummer puts an arm behind his back to help him sit up, and he doesn’t even fight it. She pours him a drink, and another for herself.

“To the Ring,” she says.

“To the Belt,” he corrects, because he can’t stop himself for one fucking minute.

Drummer gives him a sour smile and tips her glass toward him. “To all the fucking optimists who refuse to die,” she says.

“Ya,” he agrees, finally. “I drink to that.”

* * *

A feast of worlds, and Drummer at the helm of the greatest ship in the system. The Belters make their own gravity now.

A carpet of stars, rolled out before them; an invitation into the infinite unknowable future.

They set sail.


End file.
